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Charlie Bucket is a poor boy living with his widowed mother and four bed-ridden grandparents in a tiny
house. Charlie supplements the meager family income by delivering newspapers after school. One day, the
family, along with the rest of the world, learns that the candy maker Willy Wonka has hidden five Golden
Tickets amongst his Wonka Bars. The finders of these special tickets will be given a full tour of his
tightly-guarded candy factory, as well as a lifetime supply of chocolate. Charlie wants to take part
in the search, but cannot afford to buy vast quantities of chocolate like other participants. Four of
the tickets are found by: Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous German boy; Veruca Salt, a spoiled English
girl; Violet Beauregarde, a gum-chomping American girl; and Mike Teevee, a television-obsessed American
boy. As they find their tickets, a sinister-looking man is observed whispering in their ears, to whom
they listen attentively despite their preoccupations with their particular obsessions. Charlie's hopes
are dashed when news breaks that the final ticket had been found by a Paraguayan millionaire.
The next day, as the Golden Ticket craze dies down, Charlie finds a silver coin in a gutter and uses
it to buy a Wonka Bar. Simultaneously, word spreads that the ticket found by the millionaire was
forged and that one ticket is still about somewhere. When Charlie opens the bar, he finds the real
golden ticket, and races home to tell his family, but is stopped along the way by the same man who
had been seen whispering to the other four winners. The man introduces himself as Arthur
Slugworth, a rival confectioner who offers to pay Charlie a large sum of money for a sample
of Wonka's latest creation, the Everlasting Gobstopper.
Grandpa Joe manages to get out of bed to serve as Charlie's tour chaperone. The next day, Wonka
greets the children and their guardians at the factory gates and leads them inside, requiring
each to sign a contract before the tour can begin. Inside is a psychedelic wonderland full of
chocolate rivers, giant edible mushrooms, lickable wallpaper and other ingenious inventions and
candies, as well as Wonka's workers, the small, orange-skinned, green-haired Oompa-Loompas. As
the tour progresses, each of the first four children misbehave despite Wonka's warnings, resulting
in serious consequences. Augustus is sucked through a chocolate extraction pipe system and sent
to the Fudge Room, having fallen into a chocolate river from which he was trying to
drink. Violet transforms into a giant blueberry after trying an experimental piece
of Three-Course-Dinner Gum. Veruca is rejected as a "bad egg" and sent plummeting down a garbage
chute in the Chocolate Golden Egg Sorting Room. Mike is shrunken to only a few inches in height
after being transmitted by "Wonkavision"—a broadcasting technology that can send objects through
television instead of pictures. The Oompa-Loompas sing a song after each mishap, describing that particular child's poor behavior.
Charlie also succumbs to temptation along with Grandpa Joe, as they stay behind in the Bubble
Room and sample Fizzy Lifting Drinks. They begin floating skyward and are nearly sucked into a
ceiling-mounted exhaust fan. To avoid this grisly fate, they burp repeatedly until they return to
the ground. Wonka initially seems unaware of this incident. When Charlie becomes the last remaining
child on the tour, Wonka politely dismisses him and Grandpa Joe and disappears into his office,
without awarding Charlie his lifetime supply of chocolate. Grandpa Joe and Charlie enter the
office, where Wonka tells them that Charlie does not get the prize because he broke the
rules. Puzzled, Grandpa Joe denies seeing any rules. Wonka irritably reveals the forfeiture
clause of the contract Charlie signed. Charlie's part in the theft of the Fizzy Lifting Drinks
means that he violated the contract, and therefore he receives nothing and Wonka furiously
dismisses them. Grandpa Joe vows to give Slugworth the gobstopper in revenge, but Charlie
can't bring himself to hurt Wonka and places the gobstopper on his desk.
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